Around this blog, we definitely encourage and support you to fight back against the education system. If you are being wronged, then you should step up and seek resolution to your conflict. However, we would definitely be remiss if we didn’t do our best to give you advice on how to actually stay motivated while you’re dealing with a conflict in college.

First things first: you will want to make sure that you’re keeping things in the proper perspective. You don’t want to think that it’s the end of the world because you’re trying to get a conflict solved.

We’ve been there, actually. One of the members of our team actually had to deal with this her freshman year. She had a roommate that just wouldn’t respect her wishes, nor the rules for the dorm. Between bringing in alcohol and staying up with loud music, it was very difficult to get anything done. She felt like it would mean that she would need to leave school, but it really wasn’t as drastic as that.

She started out by making a formal letter and sending it through the mail to her roommate. She took this tactic from fighting the credit card companies, but she found that this was also something very effective with her roommate. The behavior still continued, but our teammate knew that the formal complaint was the first step.

She made sure to repeat the process by sending a letter to the resident assistant, through the same method. She outlined the problem, and the steps she has taken so far, as well as what she would do next if the problems did not cease. So the assistant went and spoke to the roommate.

Now, this is where things got pretty ugly. The roommate’s behavior escalated, to the point where some of property in the room was damaged. She got very defensive and angry, which was expected. Photos were taken of the damage and another letter was sent to the resident director, with a carbon copy sent to the resident assistant.

That type of persistence paid off. Not only was the property paid for, but the roommate was sent to another room immediately. That is the best outcome that could have happened, but it took quite a few weeks before something was done.

In the meantime, if you’re dealing with a situation like this, you will need to make sure that you really focus on the end goal. It can be hard because college is base don peer pressure in many ways, but you need to make sure that you’re doing everything you can in order to not give in. If you know that you’re in the right and that you’ve handled the conflict appropriately, then there’s really nothing to fear.

On the other hand, it’s important to make sure that you don’t give it to actually getting angry. Anger isn’t going to solve your problem.

Overall, you can fight back against your conflict and win. Think about how satisfying it’s going to feel when you get the resolution you ultimately want — now that’s a good reason to stay motivated!